The beef stew turned out exactly right, and Lymur was satisfied as someone who took this kind of thing seriously. He finished the bowl, rinsed it, and left the kitchen exactly as he preferred it — clean enough that future him would have no complaints.
Then it was bath time. He'd gotten particular about this over the years. He had an awful experience being broke so he became particular about comfort and cleanliness once he wasn't.
Getting dressed took longer than the bath. His wardrobe had so much stuff that a more self-aware person might have described as a problem, but Lymur thought of it as options, and today he wanted something that worked for an auction house VIP lounge without looking like he was trying too hard.
He settled on a dark coat over a fitted shirt, good boots, and a single silver ring on his right hand that he'd bought two weeks ago on a whim and kept forgetting he owned. He checked himself in the mirror briefly, decided that was fine, and pulled his wallet out to pocket it before reconsidering and dropping it into Void Space instead.
He locked the door behind him and headed out into the morning.
The auction wasn't until the late morning, which left him time, and Lymur spent it like how he often spent unexpected free time in the city — wandering the shopping district with no particular purpose and coming back with more bags than he'd intended.
He didn't entirely understand why buying things felt good. It just did. Clothes especially, but also accessories, kitchenware he didn't really need, books he'd read in an afternoon and then arrange on the shelf. There was something satisfying about it, about choosing things and owning them, that he'd never fully analyzed and didn't really feel the need to.
Today it was a coat in a dark green he hadn't seen before, a pair of boots to replace ones that had gotten scuffed on a mission last month, two rings, and a belt that he'd spotted in a window.
All this while people on the street found reasons to slow down in the same direction he was walking, then seemed to catch themselves doing it and looked elsewhere. Nobody approached him, though. They just watched from a distance.
He loaded everything into Void Space outside the last shop, straightened his coat, and checked the time on his wristwatch.
Auction, he thought. Right.
It was his first time going to the place. The Helstea auction house itself had polished stone, high ceilings, and a smell of expensive air. Guards at the entrance inspected invitations so Lymur presented his, and the guard's eyebrow twitched before he recovered.
"Sir Lymur. I'll have someone escort you."
The someone turned out to be a broad man with an easy grin who introduced himself while they walked. "Reynolds Leywin, head of security. VIP lounge is this way, sir."
The name's familiar, but where... Lymur thought as he followed Reynolds.
The lounge was already occupied by the time he arrived. A soft-featured man stood up immediately when they entered.
"Sir Lymur!" Vincent Helstea, by the introduction that followed. He also introduced the woman beside him — his wife, Tabitha — and then a young girl nearby. "My daughter, Lilia."
Lilia's eyes went full brightness. "You're actually — you're really — " She stopped herself. "Hi."
"Hi," Lymur replied.
Reynolds was already pointing to the rest of his family. His wife, Alice, who smiled with warmth. And beside her, a boy — Arthur Leywin — who looked at Lymur and was paying very close attention.
Leywin... That was when he finally remembered. It was in a campfire, years back, with five tired adventurers.
"They lost their son recently. Their firstborn — Arthur."
He glanced at Reynolds, at Alice, at the boy between them, and the pieces clicked by themselves without much effort.
Is he a ghost!? — and such was his conclusion.
He figured out a moment later that Arthur really did survive, but he didn't say anything about it.
The door opened again, and Helen Shard walked in, already in light armor, clearly on duty, and stopped when she saw him.
"Lymurrrr~." Her face broke into a genuine grin. "Well. I should've expected you here."
"Helen, hi~."
They exchanged a handshake.
"How long has it been?"
"Three years., I think"
"Ahahaha. Three years and you look exactly the same. We're both adventurers but we somehow never run into each other. I wonder why that is?"
"You know, I was just wondering the same thing."
She laughed and the others came in behind her — Adam, Angela, Durden, and Jasmine in that particular order, each of them doing their own version of surprised-and-pleased when they found out who was sitting in the VIP lounge. The reunion was like those of people who had parted on good terms and picked up naturally, and for a while the lounge was filled of voices inbetween catching up and old stories.
Helen was already into the night they met Lymur before he even settled back into his seat. "— and we woke up the next morning completely wrecked," she was saying to Vincent and his wife, "because he spent the entire night apparently fighting something in his sleep—"
"In his sleep," Adam confirmed, with feeling. "I had a bruise that lasted two weeks."
"Hey. I was asleep," Lymur said.
"That's what made it scary," Angela said.
Lymur accepted this and moved on.
He noticed Arthur during a lull, not for the first time. The boy had been doing it since he'd arrived — watching him intently and not like the starry-eyed attention Lilia had which was at least acceptable. Lymur noticed, set it aside, picked it up again a few minutes later.
Suspicious, he thought, which was a reasonable conclusion, though he acknowledged secretly that he himself had done stranger things to strangers so perhaps it balanced out.
Then his eyes turned to the small creature curled near Arthur's side.
...That's a dragon, ain't it?
He was fairly confident about this. He'd seen one before — though it was dead and bigger — in a cave three years ago with a gray man standing beside it. He knew what a dragon looked like, and whatever Arthur's animal companion was pretending to be, it was clearly not a fox. It was doing a reasonable impression of a fox, though, he'd give it that.
He thought about asking about it. He genuinely almost did. He opened his mouth, got halfway to forming the question, and then stopped.
If they're hiding it, they want it hidden.
He closed his mouth. Set it aside.
That was very considerate of me, he thought, with some satisfaction.
The royal family arrived regally. Everyone in the room rose up and bowed. Lymur, seated nearest the window, only gave a short nod. And apparently that wasn't remotely close to being adequate.
The guards flanking the family moved like they'd been preparing for this their whole lives. Several of them stepped forward like their entire professional identity involved preventing exactly this kind of disrespect, if you could even call that disrespect.
Lymur looked at the drawn weapons. Looked at the guards holding them, and wondered, what the fuck did I do now?
All he did was nod and that was somehow deserving of death? — Gimme a break~
"How dare—"
"Stand down." A young boy — likely the prince, Curtis Glayder — stepped forward, one hand raised. He looked at Lymur with respect and curiosity before nodding and glaring at the guards. "Show respect. He's an S-class."
The king's eyes moved to Lymur with a complicated face. He raised one hand and the weapons came down, though reluctantly.
"Quite right," the king said. "We are pleased to meet you, Sir Lymur. Though I have to say, you're younger than I expected."
Lymur didn't say anything, only nodded again — slightly more than the first time — which he hoped split the difference adequately. The guards once again gritted their teeth but Lymur only looked at them smugly.
Eventually, the Glayders settled in, and pleasantries moved around the room like they did at events like this. Lymur participated at the minimum level required and spent the rest of his attention tracking the room, which was a habit he'd never fully turned off.
It was Sebastian who took the stage next. The court magician had been quiet until he wasn't, leaning toward the king while whispering intently. Lymur caught the direction of his gaze, and it was toward Arthur, or more likely the small creature beside him. Lymur suddenly felt interested in drama.
Oh, here we go.
He watched Sebastian lean close and murmur something. Watched the king's expression turn into polite interest. Watched Arthur know what was coming a moment before it arrived.
The king turned to Arthur. "That companion of yours is quite remarkable." A pause. "How much would you part with it for?"
Lymur's chin moved forward maybe two centimeters. His elbows found his knees.
"My apologies, your majesty. Sylvie isn't for sale," Arthur said. His voice was steady.
Sebastian's face did something dismissive. "A bond like that is wasted on a child!" he said.
The creature — Sylvie, apparently — made a small sound that expressed an opinion.
Lymur watched the temperature in the room keep climbing as he realized the drama was getting genuinely spicy. Arthur wasn't backing down. Sebastian was getting tighter, more clipped. The king was still trying to manage it but visibly losing patience in the process.
Should I step in, Lymur thought. He tilted his head slightly. Not yet. This is still interesting.
Sebastian ran out of patience at approximately the same time his mana started moving.
The air in the room changed in the half-second before anything visible happened — Lymur felt it, and in the same instant made his decision.
He let Ruler's Ambition activate.
Then there was a pressure settling over the room, moving through every mental defense in the lounge like how water moved through cloth.
Lymur directed most of it at Sebastian.
Sebastian sat down. Or more like his legs stopped working, and he sat down, and then he was on the floor, and his face was pale like he had just seen something he would never recover from. The smell of piss confirmed the rest of his state of mind.
The room was completely silent.
Lymur released the Ambition.
He scratched his cheek.
"Don't fight," he said. He looked around the room with an apologetic smile. "Fighting's bad."
Nobody moved.
"It's bad for your health," he added, in case that helped.
It did not appear to help.
He turned toward the king. "Taking things from kids is pretty awful, when you think about it. You should probably just let it go."
The king glared at him before sighing in resignation.
Every other person present in the room was experiencing their own private version of the same feeling. That deeply unsettling discomfort of watching something simultaneously ridiculous and scary, the cognitive dissonance of a person saying fighting's bad with a smile while the most powerful mage in the room was folded on the floor having soiled himself. There was no correct response to it. The room had no script for it.
The king then cleared his throat.
"...You are correct," he said, with great dignity. Though even he could not hide the sweat that dripped off his forehead. "The matter is closed."
Sebastian remained on the floor.
Lymur nodded pleasantly, leaned back in his chair, and looked toward the auction hall as the staff below began making the preparations that signaled things were about to start.
The auction proceeded as though nothing in particular had happened.
◢◣◢◣◢◣
The auction had been a waste of time.
Lymur hadn't spent a single coin but he'd sat through hours of watching people bid themselves into increasingly poor decisions, and the most interesting thing he could say about the evening was that the king had a thing for beast cores. He'd watched the A-class one go for nearly triple its actual value and actually felt secondhand embarrassment.
He'd thought about jumping into a few of the bidding wars, if he was being honest. Not really because he wanted the items. He just kind of wanted to fight someone over something. But he knew this was not a great reason to spend money and so he just kept his hands in his lap.
Outside now, the night air was cold, and Lymur was thinking about whether he had enough potatoes left at home when he heard his name.
"Lymur~~!"
The Leywins and Helsteas were coming out behind him, the Twin Horns with them, and Reynolds Leywin walked up a bit faster like he had been waiting to say something properly.
"We wanted to thank you again," Reynolds said. "For earlier, with the royal guard situation. It could've gone real badly."
"It really wasn't anything," Lymur said, and meant it. He scratched the back of his head. "You can forget about it."
He was genuinely a little flustered by it, actually, though he'd rather not admit that.
What he didn't know — and what none of them were going to tell him — was that most of the group still had the memory of earlier sitting in their chests like a cold stone. The moment his Ambition had every single one of their bodies locked. It had lasted maybe three seconds but it had felt considerably longer.
Nobody mentioned it. That was what mattered. Mostly out of respect, but also because he was smiling at them like a person who had done a small favor and genuinely wouldn't understand why everyone would be making a fuss. But the way a few of them stood just slightly further from him than before — well, that was new.
They were still talking when the royal family came out.
The prince spotted Lymur immediately and his face did something that would have been undignified for a royal if anyone had felt like pointing it out. His sister Kathlyn, who had a reputation for being hard to impress, hurried to Lymur's side within about thirty seconds and took a hold of his coat sleeve.
The king looked at his daughter. Then at Lymur. Then back at his daughter.
"She doesn't usually — " the queen began, but stopped herself.
Lymur crouched down to the prince's level. "How was the auction?"
"Seven out of ten," the prince said seriously.
"What would've made it a ten?"
The prince thought about it. "More explosions."
"Yeah... that totally makes sense," Lymur said, and stood back up.
The king, still processing the Kathlyn situation, "You seem to be good with children."
"Kids are just honest," Lymur said. "It makes them easy to be around."
Arthur, meanwhile, off to the side, was visibly trying not to laugh.
It was going fine, actually. Then another group crossed the floor toward them and the atmosphere flipped.
The Wykes family arrived. The patriarch at the front and behind him his two sons. The older one, Baron, was someone Lymur heard about. Everyone in Dicathen knew the Thunderlord, one of the strongest humans alive, by most accounts. The younger one, Lukas, Lymur didn't know.
The patriarch, Otis, greeted the royal family properly, exchanged the appropriate words, and then his attention turned to Lymur.
"You must be the S-class everyone's talking about," he said.
"Yup, that's me," Lymur said, and gave him a small wave that earned him the usual side-eyes from the people who knew him. Reynolds had what Lymur was starting to recognize as his "please have normal social behavior just once" expression.
Baron looked him over quietly.
Then Lukas stepped forward.
He looked Lymur up and down and said, "So you're the one everyone's making such a big deal about," he said.
Lymur looked at him.
"You don't look like much, honestly." Lukas shrugged, like he was doing everyone a favor by saying it. "I'm thinking you probably just paid someone to get that classification. Wouldn't be the first time, eh?"
The sentence was said and it sat there.
Nobody said anything. Arthur had gone very still. Reynolds looked like he was doing math about the fastest way to physically relocate himself and his family. The king had the neutrality of a man watching something happen that he couldn't stop.
Lymur had gone very quiet for a moment.
He knew himself well enough at this point. Three years of being himself had made certain things clear. He was patient. He was easy-going. He genuinely liked people, especially kids — there was something about all that untested potential and zero pretense, that he found he cared about more than most things.
But more than anything, he knew he was strong, and that the confidence he'd built was not nothing. It wasn't arrogance — it was the thing that let him live the way he lived, untroubled by the things that troubled most people. It was probably his best quality, honestly. And this kid had just walked up and taken a swing at it.
No disrespect toward his strength was tolerable.
And so his head tilted.
"Oh?"
The smile that came onto his face wasn't the usual one. It was the same shape, same position, but something behind the eyes was a little unhinged and that made him hard to look at. It was indescribably creepy.
He hadn't done anything. No skill, no intent, no aura.
Just a look.
But Baron moved anyway. The lightning around him became active in an instant and he was in front of his brother and father with his hands up before most people had processed what was happening. The Wykes guards stepped forward while Arthur's hand picked up Sylvie from the ground.
Lukas hadn't moved. Couldn't, quite. He was looking into Lymur's eyes and his deepest instincts had taken over the part that knew how to speak and walk and act unaffected, and it was just saying one thing, very clearly, on repeat.
Don't.
Then Lymur's face reset. Just like that, back to normal — so fast that half the people present spent a second genuinely questioning whether the last five seconds had happened. He laughed and looked around at the frozen tableau of people in various stages of alarm.
"Why does everyone look like that?" he said jokingly. "Relax."
Baron had not relaxed. The lightning was still going and the bulging vein at his temple had become quite noticeable.
Lymur looked at him. "Hey. Calm down, spark boy."
The vein got worse.
But by then Lymur was already walking past him toward Lukas, who had not recovered enough to back away. He stopped in front of him and clapped him on the shoulder. Lymur was overwhelmingly taller so it was an even more awful experience for Lukas.
"I don't think you guys actually understand the consequences of facing me," he said with a wide smile. "So do yourself a favor and figure that out soon."
Then he turned around and gave a thumbs-up to the Wykes patriarch.
"And have fun finding out, yeah?"
The sound Baron made was not quite a word. The lightning around him surged and he took one step forward and then the patriarch said, "Baron. Enough."
It took a second, but the lightning faded.
Lymur stepped back and looked at the group — royals, adventurers, noble families, a collection of people who all had some version of the same experience — and smiled at them.
"Good night, everyone," he said. "It was a great auction."
He put his hands in his pockets and walked out into the night.